The Hope and Despair of Acadian Exiles, 1755-1766

In the winter of 1755, two Marshfield, Mass., selectmen knocked on the door of a family of seven Acadian exiles. They brought bad news: The two oldest sons, 23-year-old Francis and 15-year-old Paul, were to be placed in involuntary servitude. Francis was to work for a farmer, Paul as a sailor, though he suffered from debilitating seasickness.

There was no love for the French families living in New England. The French and Indian War was raging, and French families who refused to take a loyalty oath to the British were exiled from Nova Scotia. The Acadian refugees who landed in Puritan New England bore the added stigma of being Catholic -- and destitute.

Beginning in 1755, nearly 10,000 Acadians were taken from their homes and forcibly deported to the British colonies and England in scenes of woe and distress. Their houses and farms were confiscated or burned. Families were deliberately separated.

When the Acadians arrived in the colonies -- most in Massachusetts, many in Connecticut -- they were treated like prisoners of war, forbidden to move from town to town or to practice their religion.

The Michel family was lucky in some ways. They survived the disease-ridden voyage to Boston. The family wasn’t broken up. The two eldest sons threw off their indentures and were allowed to work for wages. The town even helped feed and shelter them.

French and Indian War

Map of Acadia

For many years the French and British fought over Acadia, which included Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, parts of southern Quebec and northern Maine. By 1713 the British were in control, and demanded loyalty from Acadians, who were mostly farmers. Most refused. They were called the French Neutrals.

There were more French than British in Acadia. Massachusetts Gov. William Shirley feared the French Neutrals threatened the safety of Massachusetts.

When the French built two forts in nearby New Brunswick. Shirley began recruiting forces to kick them out of Acadia. Troops that left Boston in May captured Fort Beausejour in June.

Illustration of the Acadians listening to the deportation order.

On Sept. 5, 1755, the expulsion of the Acadians – known as Le Grand Derangement – began with the announcement that the homes and property of the Acadians were forfeited to the King. The Acadians were to be sent into exile.

Estimates vary, but as many as 10,000 Acadians out of a population of 12,000 were rounded up, boarded onto ships and sent to the 13 British colonies in North America and to France. Several thousand died of disease, starvation and drowning.

Men were lured into churches under false pretenses and then locked inside; their wives and children forced to feed them at gunpoint until hired ships could take them away. Some were seized in their homes or their fields. The British seized their farms and livestock, pillaging and burning their homes to make sure they wouldn’t return.

On Oct. 8 the deportation began in ships provided by Thomas Hancock, uncle of John Hancock. John Winslow, the second in command in Nova Scotia, wrote they, "began to Embarke the Inhabitants who went verry solentarily and Unwillingly. the women in Great Distress Carrying Their Children In their arms. Other[s], Carrying their Decrept parents in their Cartes and all their Goods in Great Confustion & appeard a sceen of woe & Distres.

Massachusetts

On Nov. 15, 1755 the first overcrowded ships filled with sick, hungry Acadian exiles arrived. There hadn’t been enough food for the journey and many died of smallpox or malaria.

A deportation ship

Massachusetts was the epicenter of Le Grand Derangement. Nearly 2,000 sailed into Boston Harbor, to be parceled out to the colony’s 98 towns. The General Court gave overseers of the poor the power to 'employ, bind out or support' the Acadian families.

The first ship, the sloop Seaflower, entered Boston Harbor with 206 destitute Acadians aboard. They continued to arrive until the French and Indian War ended in 1763. Once they arrived they were treated like convicts.

Some took pity on the Acadian exiles. As a member of the General Court, Thomas Hutchinson tried to keep families together and helped write letters petitioning the Legislature. He may have helped Joseph Michel write a letter asking that his sons be released from their indenture. In Westborough, Ebenezer Parkman (grandfather of historian Francis Parkman) befriended Simon Leblanc and gave work to his children.

More often the Acadian exiles were feared and hated. A letter to the editor of the Boston Gazette cautioned the Acadian exiles could escape in stolen ships or destroy the town or powder house, 'heated with Passion and Popish zeal."

If there were any Catholic priests in Massachusetts, they weren’t allowed to say Mass. Acadians who wanted to get married did so by laymen and hoped they could renew their vows in front of a French priest some day in the future.

Acadians rounded up at Grand Pre, Nova Scotia

Acadian Exiles

At first, the Acadian exiles were allowed some freedom. Some took jobs as sailors and left for Canada. In response, the General Court passed a law in April forbidding Acadian exiles to work as sailors. Soon after, lawmakers ordered them to stay within the boundaries of the towns to which they were assigned.

Marbleheaders complained about the 37 Acadians because they could escape by water -- and in the winter the town would have to support them.

A fisherman named Belloni Melancon was sent to the frontier village of Lancaster. He apprenticed his son to an artisan to earn money, but the artisan beat him so badly he couldn't use his arm for a month. The town got sick of supporting the destitute Melancons. Some townspeople took Belloni's crippled wife from her bed and threw her into a cart. Melancon petitioned the General Court to let him move to Weymouth, where he could earn a living as a fisherman. He was allowed to fish, and the state paid for his rent and wood.

Thomas Hancock by John Smibert

The towns expected the General Court to reimburse them for the expense of keeping the Acadian exiles; the General Court expected payment from Nova Scotia; and Nova Scotia expected payment from Great Britain. Massachusetts was the only colony known to help pay to feed, house and clothe the Acadian exiles who couldn’t support themselves.

In Newton, only two of the 13 Acadian exiles were able to work. Most were children. The town billed the General Court for a six-month supply of food for them: 206-3/4 pounds of pork, 166 quarts of milk and 10 bushels of Indian meal to the Acadians.

In Methuen, Laurence Mius protested in the fall of 1756 that he was paid only three rods of old cloth, two pounds of dried cod and a pound of pork fat for two months of work. The overseer of the poor chased him with a poker and beat him so badly he spit blood for a day.

In Wilmington, John Labrador and his seven children lived in a house with no roof. He complained when the house flooded, and a town councilor told him to build a boat and navigate in it.

Early on, Massachusetts officials tried to get rid of some of the refugees. Hancock outfitted a vessel to take some of them to North Carolina in May 1756. The Acadian exiles overpowered the crew and forced their way back.

Some Acadian exiles were confined to the workhouse or hospital in Boston. In 1760, colonial troops were returning from the war and the sick Acadian exiles were turned out of the hospital to make room for them.

In 1762, the Acadians were galvanized by the French occupation of St. John's in Newfoundland. The British rounded up Acadian prisoners and put them aboard five English vessels headed toward Boston. The Massachusetts government refused them permission to land and sent them back to Halifax.

Map of deportation

Connecticut

Acadian exiles began arriving in New London, Conn., in late 1755 and continued through the next year. In the end, 400 arrived in Connecticut and were dispersed to 50 towns. Haddon received three, Hartford 13, Wethersfield nine, Farmington 14, and so forth.

A 76-year-old man and his seven grandchildren were sent to Woodbury in the winter of 1756. The children, cousins, were full of vermin and malnourished. They had been separated from their parents. The town's overseer of the poor put the children to work for joiners and farmers. On Jan. 2, 1757, four adults described as 'skeletal,' 'naked' and 'having the itch, vermin, etc.,' staggered into Woodbury. they were joyously reunited with their children. They had been sent to Annapolis, Md., and spent a year petitioning officials to let them search for their children.

War Ends

Under the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the Acadians were given 19 months to leave the British North American colonies for any French colony. They began petitioning to go home to Nova Scotia, to the French West Indies, specifically Saint-Domingue (Haiti), or Quebec or even France.

There was no money to pay for their transport.

In 1766, 900 exiles in Massachusetts gathered in Boston and decided to return to their native land. They marched through the wilderness, 400 miles. Many died along the way. In Acadia they found the English had taken over their farms. They found new homes in the counties of Digby and Yarmouth.

Michel asked the General Court for help. He argued that the boys already had jobs and the indenture should be considered null and void. The General Court investigated and concluded that the boys' forced indenture wasn’t what they intended when Acadians were willing to work and didn't want to be indentured. The family stayed in Marshfield after the war was over.

For an alphabetical list of the Acadians/French Neutrals exiled to Connecticut, click here.

For a list of the Acadians/French Neutrals exiled to Massachusetts – and to the specific towns they were parceled out to – click here and here.

One comment

On February 9th, 1756, the first family arrived in Ipswich. (Records indicate they may have been assigned to Needham and Waltham). Susanna How of the inn now known as Swasey’s Tavern received them, and at her hostelry, Margaret Landry, wife of John, gave birth to a son, named in honor of the town for its hospitality, “John Ipswich Landry.” 9th, when they found a permanent home in William Dodge’s residence at 59 Turkey Shore Rd. The Town provided them with food, a loom and tackling and two spinning wheels, plus, scythes, hoes and spades for their gardens.